At times in Christian thought, the priorities of pure doctrine and passionate mission have been perceived as opposites on a spectrum where emphasis on one results in neglect of the other, but without one, the other is deficient and doomed to crumble. Mission without doctrine is like a body without a skeleton, but apart from mission, doctrine is like dry bones in a museum. A Lutheran Reformission maintains a dual emphasis, resulting in doctrinal missions as well as missional doctrine.

Friday, February 27, 2015

In response to inquiries regarding last week's question about prayers for deceased Christians, this week's article addresses follow-up questions on that same topic:

Q: If it is permissible for
Christians and their churches to pray for their deceased fellow Christians,
then why do so few churches do so? Even
though it’s not wrong to do, is it wise?

The reasons prayer for deceased
Christians is so rare among churches are many, but a few stand out most
prominently: because of an incomplete
view of eternal life, because of its abuse in the past, and because of the
potential for it to cause confusion.

We Americans have often had handed
down to us a mythology that we merely “die and go to heaven,” and that the
story ends there. However, Scripture’s
description of life after death is much richer.
Jesus and St. Paul describe Christians as at rest with Christ following death,
but that it is not how they will stay forever.
Instead, they will be resurrected on the last day to live again in the
body in a new creation free from this life’s sorrows and sufferings.

Some who recognize this truth of the
Resurrection of the Body have chosen to pray as an expression of their
confidence that it will one day happen and they will be reunited in real,
physical life with their fellow Christians who have died. However, for those whose understanding stops
with a heavenly rest, they would see it as useless or even profane to continue
praying concerning those who already rest with their Lord, therefore they do
not contemplate the possibility of doing so.

There is also a history of abuse of
prayers for the deceased. For example,
at the time of the Reformation, one of the points of contention was concerning
purgatory and the use of prayers, indulgences, or masses to advance the
deceased person to a better state after death.
Even though both sides continued to use these prayers, the Reformers
rejected both a belief in purgatory as well as the idea that prayers offered
after death caused any change for the status of the deceased, while the Roman
church defended both ideas.

Some have also mistakenly thought
that a person who ended their earthly life destined for eternal punishment
could still attain salvation after death through the prayers and offerings of
the living. This is an idea that has
been almost universally rejected in Christian theologians in all times and
places, but because of misunderstanding or influence from other religions, has
occasionally crept into the minds of some Christians and the life of the church.

Because of these abuses, many
Christians after the time of the Reformation have chosen to exercise additional
caution by avoiding this kind of prayer entirely. Instead, they chose to limit their prayer to
prayers which give thanks for the blessings that the Lord granted to the
deceased or for the blessings that He gave to others through them.

Fear of causing confusion to those
who are unfamiliar with the church’s history and theology has also been cause
for avoiding prayers for deceased Christians in the church’s recent life. Because the visible, audible action of what
is done in the church is often more accessible to the average Christian than
the abstract words on the page of a theological explanation, Christians who
place a high value on clearly communicating the truth about Jesus have often preferred
the safer route of foregoing these sort of prayers over the risk of giving
their fellow Christians or those outside the church the false impression that
it would be possible to offer assistance after the fact to a condemned soul who
had died.

Paul writes twice in his first letter
to the Corinthians that even when certain things are permissible among
Christians they are not always helpful or wise, and that may be the case
regarding the wisdom of engaging in this practice among Christians in our time
and place.

The wisdom of making use of this
freedom by Christians will ultimately depend on the spiritual maturity of those
within a given congregation and the presuppositions that exist in the community
it serves. It may very well prove that
one pastor and congregation will determine to take up the challenge of
safeguarding against abuse and confusion as they engage in this practice while
another may conclude that these risks exceed the potential benefits and choose
not to exercise their freedom to do so.

Whether a given congregation or family determine to pray or not to pray, the
key element when approaching this question is to properly understand the
foundational Scriptural teachings about death, resurrection and salvation, and
choose what will best communicate timeless truth into the particular time and
place where they live and serve.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

For this week's newspapers, I addressed a question about praying for our fellow Christians who have died:

Q: Are Christians allowed to pray
for people who have already died? If so,
why would they do so?

God frequently invites His children
to come to Him in prayer for the things they need. He also invites Christians to pray for one
another, and not merely for themselves.
In many quarters of Christianity, it is recognized that God’s Church is
not enclosed within a boundary that limits it only to this physical world, but
that the souls of the faithful departed are also just as much a part of that
Church.

The Church’s liturgies recognize this
when they make statements such as that we worship “with angels and archangels
and all the company of heaven,” or when funeral liturgies pray for God to “Give
to Your whole church in heaven and on earth Your light and Your peace…”

So, just as the Church itself is not
limited to the souls of the living, prayer is not necessarily bound by that
limitation. However, it is a practice to
be approached with caution, because of the subtle ways in which it could go
astray.

For example, in segments of
Christianity which believe there are potential destinations for the deceased
other than eternal rest and eternal punishment, such as a purgatory, it is
common to offer prayers in order to speed the deceased’s trip from such middle
states into the Lord’s presence. For
those of us who do not hold to a third destination such as purgatory, it would
be inappropriate to offer prayers that seek to change the destination of
deceased persons, since it is held that their reward or punishment are already
determined, based on verses like Hebrews 9:27 and the story of the Rich Man and
Lazarus in Luke’s Gospel.

We often teach about prayer that
there are things which God has forbidden that will not be granted through
prayer, things which God has promised, which He will grant whether we pray for
them or not, and things God has neither promised nor forbidden which He will
answer in whatever way is most beneficial for us, since His wisdom is higher
than our own. For Christians who do not
believe in a purgatory, yet still find it allowable to pray for their departed
brothers and sisters in the faith, it falls into the second of those
categories.

Just as children might ask their
parents for things the parents had already determined to give, Christians might
pray that God would fulfill the promises that He had given in Baptism and His
Word to forgive the sins of those who trust in Him and grant them eternal life,
in light of the fact that they still await the Resurrection of the Last Day, even
though their destination is already secure.

We pray similarly in the Lord’s
Prayer when we pray that God’s name would be holy, His kingdom come, or that
His will would be done. These things
will be done even without our prayer, but we pray for them anyway – not to
change God’s intentions, but because we believe our Father’s promise and
acknowledge it through prayer.

This is similar to what we do when we
confess our sins and receive forgiveness or when we receive the Lord’s
Supper. Christians do not build up a
debt of sin, which they periodically purge by Confession or Communion. Instead, they who rely on Jesus already live
in a state of perpetual forgiveness, but continue to receive from the Lord
through these acts, because they are the thing to which He has attached His
promise.

Likewise, because our Lord has
promised these things and invited us to pray, we pray for the things He has
promised, even for those whose souls rest with the Lord, but still await the
fullness of eternal Life which will come at the Resurrection.

Christians are not required to pray
for their departed faithful in order that they receive the Lord’s promises, nor
are they forbidden from doing so because their reward is already secure. Instead, they trust what the Lord has
promised for them, and many choose to express that trust to their Father at His
invitation to prayer in anticipation of the day in which both those presently
alive and those previously departed will be reunited in eternal, resurrected
life.

Part 1 of a two-part answer on this topic. Check back soon for the conclusion of this answer.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

For this week's newspapers, I answered a reader's questions about what pastors do during the week:

Q: What does my pastor do for the
remainder of the week after the Sunday service is over?

We’ve all heard the joke about
pastors working only one hour a week, but hopefully it’s just a joke to the
people who say it, because it is certainly not a reflection of reality. In fact, due to their many commitments in the
congregation and the unusual hours in which they must fulfill them—ranging from
evening meetings with congregational boards to giving counsel to couples or
individuals during most people’s “after work” hours, to the frequent emergency
calls to the hospital or the bedside of a dying member—many pastors actually
find it a challenge to devote adequate time to their families.

One of the primary tasks of the
pastor’s work week is preparing the sermon and service for the upcoming
Sunday. If a pastor followed the
commonly-accepted formula that college speech professors dictate for preparing
a public speech, the pastor would spend one hour of preparation for each minute
of the sermon. In the real world,
pastors often rely on their education and experience to prepare more
efficiently and most report spending 10-20 hours in sermon preparation (or
20-50% of their working hours).

Unless a congregation has a
professional musician on staff or an administrative professional devoted to the
task, he is probably also responsible for planning all of the other elements of
the service, scheduling those who will perform them, and distributing the
materials necessary for them to do so.

Because the pastor is often the
primary staff member to occupy the building in smaller congregations, he may
also spend many of his office hours answering phones, responding to
correspondence, researching information requested from the congregation’s
records, sorting mail, and other administrative and office tasks—or in passing
on messages to part-time staff who perform them—beyond sermon preparation and
service planning.

If he teaches weekday or Sunday Bible
classes or instructs youth, he will spend about 2-5 hours of preparation per
hour of teaching if he is writing his own material, and an hour of preparation
per hour of teaching if he is using curriculum purchased from a Christian
publisher.

In rural areas like ours, there is
also the element of travel. When
frequently-visited hospitals are an hour away and the drive to the hospitals
where congregation members receive more specialized care may be up to 4 hours,
pastors spend a significant amount of time traveling. A visit to a member in Rochester or Iowa City
will easily occupy a full day for the pastor.

Pastors will frequently have
responsibilities to the denomination to which their church belongs or to the
district and regional bodies of that denomination, which equates to additional
meetings and travel. Additionally, much
like other teachers, doctors, and other professionals, a pastor who takes his
work seriously will devote time to keeping his skills current and expanding his
knowledge. This could take the form of
single-day classes that are nearby, but often involves week-long conferences in
another part of the country.

The descriptions above all assume a
traditional full-time clergy devoting the vocation’s statistical average 50-52
hours to congregational work, but it is becoming more common, especially in
rural congregations, for pastors to serve multiple congregations, or serve the
congregation only part-time, while working in another vocation as a supplement
for the portion of compensation the congregation cannot provide. This requires adjustments and choices to be
made, both by the pastor and the congregation, to adapt for the reduced
flexibility and shorter hours of this arrangement while maintaining the best
possible degree of pastoral care in light of the circumstances.

Lutheranism is more than a cultural identity or a denominational label. In fact, this cultural and institutional baggage may be the primary obstacle in Lutheranism’s path.

To be a Lutheran is not dependent on a code of behavior or a set of common customs. Instead, to be a Lutheran is to receive Jesus in His Word, Body, and Blood for the forgiveness of sins in the Divine Service; and to be bearers of this pure Truth to a broken world corrupted with sin, death, and every lie of the devil and man’s own sinful heart.

While the false and misleading ideas of human religious invention are appealing to sin-blinded minds, they fail when exposed to the realities of life. It is tragic when souls are led to confusion and despair because of the false religious ideas with which they are surrounded. The Biblical doctrine taught by the Apostles and restored at the Reformation holds answers which are relevant regardless of time or place and offers assurance of forgiven sins and eternal life who all who believe its message.

I am a husband, a father, the pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Burt, IA, and track chaplain at Algona Raceway.